Pais Under Earth

Ian Paisley, royal apologist and buggerer basher in Northern Ireland, has died at the age of 88. A Protestant minister since 1946, founder and leader of the Free Presbyterian Church from 1951 to 2008, Paisley was well known as a firebrand at the pulpit and the podium, regularly attacking Catholicism, ecumenism, homosexuality and any attempt at power sharing with Irish nationalists. He led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, helping to start “The Troubles” in the late 1960s, which pretty much defined life in Northern Ireland for much of the next 3 decades. Like any man of God, Paisley was actively involved in paramilitary operations, leading the Ulster Protestant Action in the 1950s and ‘60s, which carried out vigilante attacks, roadblocks and persecuted suspected IRA members, and supporting the formation of The Third Force and the Ulster Resistance in the 1980s. He attacked the Queen Mum and Princess Margaret for meeting with Pope John XXIII in 1958 saying they were "committing spiritual fornication and adultery with the Antichrist,” and celebrated his death in 1963. When Pope John Paul II spoke to the European Parliament in 1988, Paisley interrupted by shouting "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" The typical measured and respectful tones you’d expect from someone with an honorary degree from Bob Jones University. Paisley also hated Jesus Christ Superstar and Jerry Springer: The Opera, so he wasn’t all bad. His efforts helped bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974 and the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, but he was less successful in blocking the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In 2007, following the St Andrews Agreement, the Democratic Unionist Party finally agreed to share power with republican party Sinn Féin, with Paisley becoming First Minister and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness becoming deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007.